A Full Day of Unpreschooling

I’ve been unpreschooling my daughter since she was born. I just didn’t call it that way, I called it living our normal day routines I’d like to know actually how much I’m ‘homeschooling’ her so I list down what we did today (no particular order, just some typical activities we do everyday).

• Read books. [early literacy, Chinese language]
  During playtime while baby on the floor doing tummy time, bedtime routine for nap and at night. Today we read:
  - Xiao hou zi xia shan
  - Gu Dong Lai Le
  - Zuo Jing Guan Tian
  - Sesame Street’s ELMO’s Guessing Game About Color
  - Big Girl’s Potty, by Joanna Cole
  - Disney’s Monster Inc.
  - Sesame Street’s Hide and Seek, Near and Far [Chinese culture, animals, colors, animal facts, numbers]
  - My Family, Brighter Vision’s My First Learning Adventure
  - My Big Book of Action Stickers
• Watch educational programs.
  While I’m changing and feeding the baby, during breakfast, while I’m cooking or doing chores. Today she watched:
  - PBS: Watched Sesame Street show while I cooked for lunch. Joined her and watched how to say number 1 – 10 using sign language. [sign language, number]
  - Little Einstein [music terms]
  - Sesame Street short-clips
  - Best of Elmo
• Coloring.
  For example: I gave her rabbit and duck coloring page, casually say “zhe ge shi yi zhi tu” (this is a rabbit), then ask her “zhe shi shen me?” (handing the duck page), she answered “ya” [Chinese Language, Art, Fine motor skill]
  - Today: 3 Chinese coloring page: duck, rabbit, long-short
• Craft.
  Today: Glue on paper. I gave her picture pieces to glue on recycled paper. [Craft, Art, Fine motor skill]
• Painting. Today we used poster paint. We mixed red and blue to get purple [science?, art]
• Sing and play piano. We sang Sunday school songs and some lullabies, she played the piano rhythmically while I played the songs. [music, Christianity]
• Play with stickers.
  - sticker book. Introduce ’shi’ (snake) [Chinese Language, fine motor skill]
  - craft: today she decorated picture of flowers and butterfly. I casually introduced ‘hua’ (flower) and review ‘hu die’ (butterfly) [Chinese language, craft, fine motor skill]
  - brighter vision. Review Chinese words for family members (father, mother, grandma, grandpa, sister, brother), big, small, hat, clothes, shoes.
• Building tower with LEGO. [fine motor skill, creativity]
• Play with fridge magnets. Brighter Vision’s family member [Chinese language]
• Other unexpected teaching moments for example:
  - Alphabet. Play with baby on the floor. Suddenly DD pointed to the ‘W’ and said ‘M’. I wrote W and M and explain the difference. I added S and Z, letters that she still have problem with.
  - Play Sesame Street’s Online Game – Elmo’s Potty time, Cookie’s Alphabet Letter, Elmo’s classroom.

Hmm… as I’m writing the list I’m struck by the amount of ‘homeschooling’ stuff that we’re actually doing, naturally, without purposely following any curriculum or lesson plan. So much so, that I’m having difficulty creating the list (categorizing activities and what we’ve learn from it). We actually read 9 books today! (we don’t finish all books, some books we read just a few pages or a story from storybook collection.)

Another list below is some of the Chinese words we are learning / revising today.
new words: shi (snake), cheng (color orange)
revised words:

family members: pa pa (father), ma ma (mother), di di (brother), jie jie (sister), ye ye (grandpa), nai nai (grandma)

colors: hong (red), lv (green), lan (blue), huang (yellow), etc

animals: lau hu (tiger), shi zi (lion), zhu (pig), ya (duck), tu (rabbit), hu die (butterfly), mao (cat), xiong mao (panda), ma (horse), yang (sheep), hou zi (monkey)

If you are interested to teach your children Chinese language or homeschooling in general, join our community at Yahoo! Group: earlylearningchinese@yahoogroup.com . A group created to provide Chinese immersion preschool, Chinese schools, Chinese classes, Chinese materials, Homeschool materials directory and discussion board. There will be a newsletter too.

Don’t forget to check our free bilingual Chinese coloring page, worksheets, flashcards, song lyrics & rhymes at Early Learning Chinese.com

Posted by: Grace
Early Learning Chinese.com
e-mail: admin@earlylearning-chinese.com

Be Faithfully Persistent – Aim to the best of both education approach

Today’s daily devotional from Today’s Christian Woman say it perfectly to me.

“Dear woman,” Jesus said to her, “your faith is great. Your request is granted.” And her daughter was instantly healed.
Matthew 15:28

Perhaps you are going through a time where you can’t even see two steps in front of you—you can’t even begin to see the future God has in store for you. Will you start putting faith in yourself and start working harder, or will you run to God, fall into his arms, rest in his presence, and allow him to guide your life? Will you be as shamelessly persistent as the woman in this verse? Have faith—God has a purpose for your life. He will answer your prayers.

As I research more about homeschooling, I’m more and more convinced that it is the answer to my desire. I would like to send my daughter to Chinese immersion school to get the best Chinese language exposure. I also would like to send my daughter to Christian school to get God-centered learning environment.

I have not find any perfect school for her yet. She’s still two year old so I choose to send her to Chinese immersion preschool. To me, priority is clear. Christianity takes the first priority, Chinese second. For now, I think I can do the ‘Christian education’ myself at home by reading bible stories, singing sunday school songs, and foremost, being role model. Plus sunday school at our church.

So, for some extent, I’ve been doing homeschooling all along.

I’ve started a Yahoo! Group for discussion board of like-minded parents (homeschooling, Christianity, Chinese language learning) and provide directory for Chinese schools, Chinese teachers, and Homeschool Support Groups.
I invite you to join at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/earlylearningchinese/

It’s far from complete since I’ve just started it last night. Join now so you can be automatically notified when new resources added or new discussion is going on. The fact that you read this post until this part means you’re at least interested about the main purpose of this group, so join now.

Posted by: Grace
Early Learning Chinese.com
e-mail: admin@earlylearning-chinese.com

God’s plan

is the expression of his love. Never in our lives will God ever express his plan except as an expression of his perfect love. God always has our best interests at heart. He’ll take any situation a person is going through, even if it is a terrible one, and will use it for a good, overall purpose in one’s life.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

Jeremiah 29:11

—- taken from: Encouraging Words Daily Devotional for Women, Thursday, June 14, 2007

Your Opinion is Wanted

Dear Visitors to www.earlylearning-chinese.com

I’d love to hear your opinion about the site.

First, clarification. Earlylearning-chinese.com is not a company (yet). I am the webmaster and I started the project for my daughter. She attended a local Chinese school and love to color, everytime she comes back from school she always want to color her textbook. So I created those coloring page to ‘review’ chinese character with her and to save the textbook from being torn apart and scribbled all over the place.

I have some knowledge of HTML and I’ve been searching the internet for good supplement material for my daughter but I found none. So since I’ve spent time creating the pages, I’d like to share what we have. It’s FREE to use but PLEASE DON’T commercialize or copy into your own website.

Why the Amazon a-store? Because I love to shop at Amazon. I don’t rely on that for my living. It’s a way to make the website more attractive with some products to see complete with product review etc. When you buy through my link to Amazon.com I’ll get a little bonus, so please do so to support the website and the free materials offered.

I’m not a chinese teacher, nor a native speaker. I’d like to invite anyone who have good resources to contribute to this website. Articles, songs, etc as long as you have the copyright for it or it is public domain. It can serve you as ‘free advertisement’ since I’ll make a page for the list of contributor to this website.

My time is limited. It has been a month since the project was started. I’d like to update the website everyday but sometimes it just can’t fit my schedule.

So again. Your opinion about the website, just to let me know which resources are useful and what resources should be added. You can comment on this post. It’s moderated, I have to approve it before it appear on the blog. If you like it to be a private message for me please put ‘private’ on the first line of your comment then only I will read your comment and nobody else.

Posted by: Grace
Early Learning Chinese.com
e-mail: admin@earlylearning-chinese.com

Joined Amazon Associate Program

I’ve added a link to my amazon associate a-store at http://www.earlylearning-chinese.com

Posted by: Grace
Early Learning Chinese.com
e-mail: admin@earlylearning-chinese.com

Our steps to raise multilingual children

I just want to share our family’s journey in raising multilingual children. We follow the first five steps to success by Christina Bosemark.

1. Family agreement.
We agreed since I was pregnant with my first child that we will raise her to be multilinguist. A bit of background, we are Indonesian couple, lived in Singapore for about 7 years before we moved to the US. We are chinese Indonesian, my father in law is Chinese citizen, so naturally my husband speak more mandarin than I do. Working in a multinational company, there is opportunity for my husband to be relocated to China. He refuses to do so since he has limited knowledge of written chinese. So we experience the advantage of being multilingual, yet we also experience the disadvantage of not knowing written chinese. Therefore, we hope our children will be ‘true’ multilinguist and we realize the importance of starting to learn those language early.

2. Enthusiastic, yet realistic
Indonesian and English should be no problem for our family. Spoken Chinese should be achievable, but written Chinese is more tricky.

3. The practical plan
We speak Indonesian at home. We go to Indonesian church. We live in the US, English speaking community. Our challenge is to get our children enough exposure in Chinese language. The ideal scenario would be for my husband to speak only Chinese to them, I speak Indonesian, and let community language take care of English. In reality, it is difficult to strictly do that. So, we still speak Indonesian at home. We sing children songs in Chinese since our child was a baby. When she was one year old, we enroll in chinese music program at our city’s community center. Now that she is two year old, we enroll her in local chinese school, twice a week, two hours each. In future, I’ll write about that later.

4. Get together
We go to Indonesian church so we have Indonesian community. We hope to find more mandarin speaking playdates in addition to the Chinese school our daughter is attending. Anyone interested ?

5. Be patient
Our daughter is still 2 year old, so we still waiting for the result. She does speak more Chinese since she is attending the school. Her pronunciation is better than us. Let’s hope it will work out fine.

Posted by: Grace
Early Learning Chinese.com
e-mail: admin@earlylearning-chinese.com